Video Clips

	Person	Notes
	Red Auerbach	Former President and Coach of the Boston Celtics, friend and collaborator with Rupp
	Adolph Rupp	Former UK head basketball coach (1930-1972)

Interviewees

Kentucky Coaches:

	Person	Notes
	Gale Catlett	Former UK assistant coach under Rupp (1971-72)
	Joe B. Hall	Former UK player (1948-49) and assistant coach under Rupp (1965-66 to 1971-72), later UK head coach (1972-73 to 1984-85)
	Dick Parsons	Former UK player (1958-59 to 1960-61) and assistant coach under Rupp and Hall (1969-70 to 1979-80)
	Neil Reed	Former UK assistant coach under Rupp (1962-63 to 1964-65)
	Tubby Smith	Former UK head coach (1997-98 to 2006-07)

Media:

	Person	Notes
	Dave Kindred	Newspaper reporter and later sports editor with Louisville Courier Journal (1965 to 1977)
	Billy Reed	Newspaper reporter with Lexington Herald and Louisville Courier Journal and later sports editor. (1966 to 1986).
	Russell Rice	Sports editor of Lexington Leader (1962); Sports Information at UK (1967), later became UK Sports Information Director; prolific author and UK historian

Former UK Players:

	Person	Notes
	Mike Casey	Former UK player under Rupp (1967-68 to 1970-71)
	Larry Conley	Former UK player under Rupp (1963-64 to 1965-66)
	Louie Dampier	Former UK player under Rupp (1964-65 to 1966-67)
	Dan Issel	Former UK player under Rupp (1967-68 to 1969-70), all-time leading men's scorer at UK
	Thad Jaracz	Former UK player under Rupp (1965-66 to 1967-68)
	Tommy Kron	Former UK player under Rupp (1963-64 to 1965-66)
	C.M. Newton	Former UK player under Rupp (1949-50 to 1950-51); later athletic director at UK
	Tom Payne	Former UK player under Rupp (1970-71); first black varsity basketball player at UK
	Mike Pratt	Former UK player under Rupp (1967-68 to 1969-70)
	Pat Riley	Former UK player under Rupp (1964-65 to 1967-68)
	Herky Rupp	Son of Coach Adolph Rupp; former UK player under Rupp (1959-60 to 1961-62)

Former Recruits:

	Person	Notes
	Butch Beard	Former Louisville player
	Wes Unseld	Former Louisville player
	Perry Wallace	Former Vanderbilt player; first black player in the SEC

Others:

	Person	Notes
	Frank Dickey	President of the University of Kentucky (1956 to 1963)
	Jim Green	Former UK Track athlete; first black athlete to graduate from UK
	Gerald Smith	UK Professor of African-American Studies
	Jim Tucker	Paris KY Native; Former All-American at Duquesne, NBA player and Harlem Globetrotter
	Claude Vaughan	Team tutor and manager under Rupp
	Don Weber	Former Track & Field coach at UK

Adolph Rupp: Myth, Legend and Fact

Narrated by Dick Gabriel. WKYT Television, Lexington KY, 2005

Introduction

Billy Reed: It has given us a stigma that we don't deserve to have.

Tommy Kron: I just don't think the facts are there. I'd like to see the facts come out.

Herky Rupp: They were manufacturing a story that didn't exist.

Dave Kindred: Everything I've ever read about Adolph Rupp seems to be have written by people who had no idea who Adolph Rupp was.

Neil Reed: For a man to be just the opposite of what he's been made, that's not right.

Butch Beard: They just wanted to be the first to integrate the sport.

Gerald Smith: Everyone's pointing fingers at Adolph Rupp, but I think in the process we're also forgetting about the University of Kentucky and the climate here.

Claude Vaughan: And there was an enormous amount of pressure put on him by some of the local bigots.

Tom Payne: At the end of his life, he was progressive and he even had affection for me.

Pat Riley: People who didn't know him went through the myth and the legend and all the rumors more than anything else, and did not go directly to people who knew Adolph.

Adolph Rupp: We had a lot of fun. To those of you that went down the glory road with me, my eternal thanks. Good night.

Dick Gabriel: His parting words of thanks tinged with sorrow. Adolph Rupp wasn't ready to leave his job as the head coach at the University of Kentucky. He was forced to do so by the school's mandatory retirement age. There's no way he could have known his image would outlast his legacy of championship basketball. It was an image he no doubt would have hated. Rupp's family and friends find it appalling and heartbreaking. Reporters who covered his program say the story has been kept afloat by journalists who should know better. Here at the UK basketball museum you're surrounded by evidence the coaching prowess of Adolph Rupp. But through a concurrence of events, he has become the Darth Vader of 'college basketball. People who were there and knew him say it's not fair. And some facts, little known until now, would seem to back that up.

Building a Dynasty

Dick Gabriel: Adolph Rupp built his program at Kentucky in a manner common to coaches of his era, through strength of will, fear and intimidation.

Larry Conley: Were there days that I disliked him ? You bet. I mean there were days where he would scream and yell at me like he did all his players for the 40 plus years he was there. But at the same time, while he did that, I think he was always looking to improve his team. To make his players better. To certainly win games.

C.M. Newton: The charisma that he brought, you know he had some national championship success and so on when I came along and you know it was recognized that he was, pretty much, the master coach.

Pat Riley: I think the reason why he was so successful is because he was probably, at that time, the hardest working coach in college basketball. He worked very hard to learn from the master, in Phog Allen.

Gale Catlett: Coach Rupp was a dictator. And you had to be a dictator at that time. The most successful coaches in college sports back during that era were dictators. And you think of Bear Bryant, you think of Coach Rupp and you think of Darrell Royal at Texas and you think of just the many great coaches. They had built these empires, so to speak.

Dave Kindred: He had his pick of great players and he demanded that they be good. Bill Spivey once told me that 'Adolph wanted all of us to hate him and he succeeded.'

Billy Reed: Coach Rupp didn't have much use for anybody who couldn't help Coach Rupp. He was hard on the writers. He was hard on some of his rival coaches and he was certainly hard on his players. It's like the quote that somebody once said about Vince Lombardi, he treated us all alike, like dirt, like dogs. And that's kind of the way coach Rupp was.

Dick Gabriel: He demanded and commanded respect for his authority, which was a guiding force in his own life.

Frank Dickey: Being of German parents, he had this innate respect for authority, but on the other hand he wanted to have things his way a lot of the times. But he always was willing to accept the final decision which was made by his superior in terms of the position at the University..

Joe B. Hall: I think he gave the impression that he didn't like you or didn't respect you, whoever you were. That was just his nature. And outside of that, when you were with him one on one he was as personable and charming and gregarious as he could be.

Dick Gabriel: He was known as a brilliant tactician, and as long as the victories kept piling up, Rupp was comfortable with that description. His ego became the stuff of legend, or at least the occasional anecdote

C.M. Newton: Coach Rupp had a very, I'll say this kindly a very healthy ego. He let you know who he was. I remember the old famous story about him driving down through Western Kentucky somewhere and having to stop and going in, didn't have any money, and he wrote a check. And the guy said that Coach Rupp wrote a check and put Adolph Rupp on there and handed it to him and said 'You know who that is ?' And the guy says, 'I hope it's you !' That was the kind of ego he had. Everybody knew who he was.

Dave Kindred: Rupp believed that Adolph Rupp was a great coach. He believed that with everything in him and he proved it. But at the same time he didn't mind letting you know that he thought he was very good. And again, that was at a time in history when modesty was thought to be a great attribute. He was not a modest guy. He won 872 games and his players lost 172.

Dick Gabriel: Like the New York Yankees during the late 40's and 50's, Kentucky was the bane of every underdog. And it's powerful coach, the emblem of the team everybody wanted to knock off.

Gale Catlett: When I had coached 15 or 20 years, and I had gotten in between my 40s and 50s, I understood more about what Coach Rupp stood for. And how he treated people, and how he had to have this side about him that you couldn't penetrate, because if you're not tough in coaching, you will not last. I think now we're in an era where you not going to see many coaches lasting 30, 40 years. He lasted 42 years, that is phenomenal.

Dick Gabriel: Under his tutelage, the Kentucky Wildcats became the standard for all of college basketball and a source of immense pride in the bluegrass state.

Herky Rupp: He made Kentucky basketball what it is today. Because when he came here in 1930, we were in the midst of the depression. Kentucky was not a rich state. And he gave the people of Kentucky, whether it was the far eastern Kentucky or the far western Kentucky, something that they could hang their hat on and say 'This is something that we're proud of. This is something that we're better than you at. And that is basketball.'

Pat Riley: The University of Kentucky, today, is a monument, from a basketball standpoint because of one person, and one person only. And that was the 41 years that Adolph Rupp taught the game of basketball at Kentucky. Taught the fans of Kentucky what great basketball was all about. And also taught, I think, you know, a generation of players who became great coaches how to teach the game that have monuments in the Hall of Fame right now.

Gale Catlett: One of the main reasons I had some success in coaching, was because of what I learned from Adolph Rupp about basketball, about people, about life. And he was a teacher of people, not basketball. And I just admired him so much, and I will always think, in my mind, that he was the greatest coach ever to coach the game, in any sport.

Dick Gabriel: Unlike some of his contemporaries, Rupp could leave his work at the office. Away from the court, he would immerse himself in the world of business, including the cattle he raised on his farms.

Adolph Rupp: I worked to get off a farm. I had all I wanted as a youngster. And as soon as I got off the farm, I worked to get a farm with the hopes that I could get back on the farm. And, I decided that I was going to raise Hereford cattle, and I've been in the Hereford business ever since.

Dick Gabriel: He was a voracious reader, of more than playbooks and manuals.

Herky Rupp: People are complex, and I guess you might say that my father was complex in that he was multi-dimensional.

Gale Catlett: And he was a very deep man, he just didn't say yes or no. He always had a deep answer for you. And understood Shakespeare, loved Shakespeare, and some things like that. I was just amazed at how intelligent he was away from basketball about things in life.

Dick Gabriel: The downside of Rupp's career coincided with one of the most turbulent decades in the history of America, the 1960's. The civil rights movement shook the nation. For some it was all happening so fast, for others not fast enough, including the recruitment of black basketball players in the Southeastern Conference.

Perry Wallace: From the late 1950's on into the 1960's possibilities were in the air for a new way of life in the South and the United States. And even when you were a young kid, you saw television, I mean I saw the Little Rock, we watched the Little Rock Central High affair on television, we watched James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi. So the idea of there being integration as a possibility was more real than it ever had been.

Wes Unseld: One of the leaders of the local, well not local, but nationally black community at Kentucky and came out in the papers and told everybody what I should do. My mom told him what he could do.

Butch Beard: You've got to understand that Kentucky, of course, was, and still is, SEC basketball. They just wanted to be the first to integrate the sport.

Gerald Smith: I think one of the things that we cannot overlook, is that even though everyone's pointing fingers at Adolph Rupp, but I think in the process we're also forgetting about the University of Kentucky and the climate here as well as the climate in the city of Lexington. It just was not as progressive as people would like to assume that it was.

Dick Gabriel: In 1966 his Rupp's Runts ballclub, one of the most popular teams in the history of Kentucky basketball, played Texas Western in the NCAA championship game. The Runts, like every team in the Southeastern Conference, were all white. Texas Western started five blacks. The issue of race, barely registered at game time, but about ten years later, journalists began to characterize that game as a turning point in the history of the sport. Eventually Rupp's name became synonymous, not so much with victories and championships, but with resistance to change in the deep South.

Billy Reed: Had Duke played Texas Western, I don't think you would have seen these stories. It was Coach Rupp, and everything that people though he represented that revisionist historians have latched on to and really made, you know tried to make fact out of fiction in my opinion.

Dick Gabriel: He was an easy target. Rupp, during the 1950's, had sparred with the media during the gambling scandal that engulfed his program, forcing it to shut down for a season.

Dave Kindred: People thought he was a bad guy. For some reason they thought he was a bad guy. He was not, you know, he was not your hail fellow well met. He wanted to beat you, he wanted to beat you bad and he wanted to keep beating you bad. And nobody liked it. And he bragged about how bad he was going to do it. Then when he did it, he bragged about it some more. So nobody liked him, and so they would pin anything on him that they could.

Dick Gabriel: But for those who played for him and coached under him, and reported on his teams, the characterizations never rang true. History, they said, was under revision.

C.M. Newton: For guys to assume, and not know the way things actually were in the society and the culture at that time, but to just kind of assume it was the way in the 70's or 80's or 90's, or when they came along, then that's a very different time frame.

Neil Reed: I'm going to tell you, I've been bitter. Since they brought this stuff up and they waited until he died. The man is the most misunderstood man when it comes to his feeling about races.

Frank Dickey: So much about what they're saying is not based on real fact. And it's based on here-say, on their own personal points of view I think if they had known the man and had been able to talk to him and understand his point of view, they would understand that he was not a racist, he was a very broad minded person on the score of racial integration.

Jim Tucker: I don't think that it was Coach Rupp's decision, not to have black players. And, I think that given the opportunity, there's no question If he knew that the kid could help him to win a ballgame, that he woud have had him.

Pat Riley: There wasn't any racism in him. There wasn't. All there was, was a guy that wanted to win and take the best players. And I think he was judged on the subject harshly because he was a winner, he was a bigger than life character.

Thad Jaracz: To think that he would not recruit somebody, and try to bring the best talent to Kentucky, because of the color of their skin, it just flies in the face of his competitiveness for one thing. I can't imagine why. It's not the same person that I knew

Neil Reed: For a man to be just the opposite of what he's been made, that's not right.

Joe B. Hall: Any attempt to make him a segregationalist was just ridiculous.

Mike Pratt: Coach Rupp would play the devil, he would dance with the devil if it meant a W, that's what he was all about. Winning, and his players went to class. That was the bottom line. How he got there, I don't think it mattered. The W was what mattered.

Dick Parsons: He was a powerful figure. And that's who you blame, in many cases, you blame the most powerful figure. He was noted throughout the Southeastern Conference and United States as a great basketball coach. But here was a program that didn't have black basketball players. So it's easy to make him the villain.

Larry Conley: A lot of people talk about him being a racist, and I totally disagree with that. I never in all the years I knew him, ever saw him a derogatory word about any minorities, ever. And I was around him a lot, a whole lot. I was around him before I went there, I was around him a lot while I was there and I was around him after I left. And I never, ever, heard him say anything bad.

Tommy Kron: I think there was a jump to conclusion on Coach Rupp, because of his demeanor, because of his gruff way, gruff approach, that it just simply, it simply fell to the notion that he was racially prejudiced. And none of us saw that.

Claude Vaughan: There wasn't a racist bone in his body and I think if anyone who knows me, Dick, and knows how I feel about things, I wouldn't have worked for him, if he were a racist. It's that simple.

Dave Kindred: I keep waiting for someone to show me, where Adolph Rupp once acted on the reason of race. Once, show me. Don't tell me what he said, or may have said, to somebody third or fourth hand. Show me where he once acted on race.

Neil Reed: He gave me a saying during that time, 'Right is right, and wrong is wrong.'

Mike Casey: People that are judging him are not being, some of them who weren't even around, weren't even born to begin with, and then here they are writing all these editorials, and just what they've picked up or heard over the years.

Billy Reed: And what happens, and I'm old enough now to see this, is that once something like that takes hold, then it becomes accepted as gospel, then it's repeated until finally it does become fact in a lot of people's minds.

Pat Riley: Adolph is, totally, I think, misrepresented, in this whole concept when it comes to him being a racist. He was not. I played for him, I know him.

C.M. Newton: He may have been a lot of things, Dick, he may, some people said he had a big ego, some said he was a tyrant, some said he motivated by fear and all that kind of business, and I don't know. But the one thing I am dead sure of is that he was not a racist.

Through the Years

Dick Gabriel: Like so many college coaches, Adolph Rupp's career began on the high school level. In 1926 his Freeport Illinois team included a black player.

Herky Rupp: Only six black youngsters in Freeport high school. He did not have to put this young man on the team for any political reasons, he put him on there because he was a basketball player and my father loved to win, and this young man was a basketball player.

Russell Rice: I came back and asked him, Coach you have a black kid. "So ?" Is said why, he said "He said he could play." It was that simple.

Dick Gabriel: In 1930, Rupp took the job at Kentucky. Although he wasn't sure it was a move he wanted to make, until he got some advice from a friend.

Adolph Rupp: He was up on a ladder hanging a sign, and he got down off the ladder, and he said 'Adolph,' he said, 'I'll tell you one thing. You take that job.' He said 'you can always go to a better job from there, than you can from here. You will never get another chance to coach another university, and while you've got the chance, you'd better take it.'

Dick Gabriel: Eighteen years later, he won the first of his four NCAA titles in 1948. That was the same year Rupp assisted in the selection process for the US Olympic basketball team. Tryouts were held in Memorial Coliseum, and among the players Rupp chose, Don Barksdale.

Herky Rupp: This youngster graduates from UCLA, is not allowed to play pro ball because the NBA was not integrated. So he's playing AAU ball. And yet through the tryouts my father selects him as the first black youngster to participate in basketball in the Olympics, for the United States.

C.M. Newton: I had not seen a lot of black players play, other than the Globetrotters at that time. And to see him, was an eye-opener for me, great player. And I can remember Coach Rupp, during those trials, calling attention to other players, his own, Wah Jones and others who were involved in this. 'Look at his footwork, watch how he does this, watch how he does that.' So Coach Rupp had a great appreciation for his skills as a player.

Dick Gabriel: In 1950, Kentucky high schools were still segregated. Black schools held their own state tournament which Rupp attended.

Jim Tucker: We had two state tournaments, black and white, so he attended a session of the black tournament.

Dick Gabriel: He noticed a young player named Jim Tucker, who grew up in nearby Paris Kentucky, following Rupp and the Wildcats.

Jim Tucker: Growing up in Kentucky, University was the only basketball team in the country. I think, that every time the University of Kentucky played, black or white, the radio was on. We didn't have television back in those days, but my mother would tune into UK basketball and the Blue and White was what we grew up with.

Dick Gabriel: After Tucker's Paris Western team was eliminated, Rupp asked for, and received, permission to speak with him.

Jim Tucker: I knew who he was, and he said to me, 'I'd like you to come to Kentucky, but you know our situation here. But what I'd like to do is contact some of my friends in the coaching community and see if they might have an interest in you because I think you have the ability to become an all-american and a good basketball player."

Dick Gabriel: One of the teams Rupp contacted was Duquesne. Tucker eventually was accepted to, and signed with the Pittsburgh school. His coach, Donald Moore, had never seen him play but trusted in Rupp's recommendation.

Jim Tucker: He said that if Adolph Rupp recommends you, that's the only reason we showed the interest, because if he couldn't have you, then we'd like to.

Dick Gabriel: Tucker eventually did play for Rupp in a two-game all-star series.

Jim Tucker: I had a lot of respect for him, I had a lot of respect for his basketball team. I respect his position, not fully realizing, you know, what was going on behind the scenes, and I believe that had he had the opportunity and support of the school at that time, he would have had black players.

Dick Gabriel: Tucker went on to become an All-American at Duquesne, which ironically enough in 1953 bumped Kentucky from the top spot in the Associated Press College Basketball poll. Duquesne wasn't the only college signing black players, but the major schools that did were predominantly northern. Rupp, who knew talent when he saw it, began to consider taking for what for THE basketball institution in the Southeastern Conference would be a powerful and dramatic step. In 1960 he contacted a Cincinnati high school coach, who was also a UK scout, and asked him to appraise two immensely talented future Hall of Famers.

Neil Reed: He asked me a question, who did I think was better, Oscar Robertson or Jerry West ? And I immediately said Oscar Robertson and he got a big grin on his face. And he said, 'Would you be interested in coming to Lexington and helping us because we're going to be recruiting black youngsters, and it's only correct, and I want somebody who feels comfortable in their homes.'

Dick Gabriel: In 1958, Kentucky would win its fourth national championship under Rupp with an overachieving team known of the Fiddlin' Five, but by the early 60's the basketball Wildcats couldn't live up to the standards they'd set. From 1959 through 64, they won just one outright SEC championship and shared another. The University of Kentucky campus had been desegregated for several years, but still there were no black student athletes allowed in the Conference. SEC institutes had adhered to a gentlemen's agreement, no recruitment of African Americans. The sports media were silent, they too were a product of their time.

Dave Kindred: I'm 30 years older now, certainly now I'm a different person than I was 30 years ago. You know, and much more attuned with that than then. Then all I cared about was finding the ball park, watching the game and writing a story about it. I had very few issues that had anything to do outside the arena.

Dick Gabriel: UK president Dr. Frank Dickey sought to change that.

Frank Dickey: We were able to break down the barriers for the students to attend the University of Kentucky. We were the first institution in the South to permit, students to, Afro-American students to come, and we should be among the first when athletics was concerned.

Dick Gabriel: In 1957, he polled SEC institutions about the possibility of recruiting black athletes. And in 1961, while he was taking his turn as president of the conference, he approached his Athletics Director Bernie Shively, football coach Charlie Bradshaw, and Rupp, and told them he was going to ask the league to formally approve the move to desegregate its athletic teams. He wanted their blessing and he got it.

Frank Dickey: Rupp's one statement, though was, he said 'I don't not want to be pushed too fast in this because I need to have the first player, or the first few recruits that we get to be successful in order that they will not harm the efforts toward integration, and that they will not harm themselves.' And he said to do this, he said, 'I think we need to find a person who is a good team player and a person who is able to maintain his academic standing and retain his eligibility.'

Dick Gabriel: The motion Dickey set before the SEC was resoundingly rejected.

Frank Dickey: I think there was only one school at that time that said 'yes we will go along with you on this.' The others said, if you do move in that direction, we're going to have to drop you from our schedule, because we cannot guarantee that when you come to our homecourt that you will be safe, or that you would be at any sort of welcome. They said, obviously, Afro-Americans on their squad would have to sleep and eat someplace else, and they didn't think that was good, and we didn't either.

Dick Gabriel: Black leaders in Lexington, who had seen the proliferation of black athletes at Northern institutions, took note of the fact that UK chose to maintain its membership in the all-white SEC.

Gerald Smith: There were things that I think that the University of Kentucky did not do, that they could have done, that they clearly could have staked out a position in terms of where the University stood on this very moral issue. We just did not take the moral leadership that we should have in terms of setting a standard for the SEC. For example, we stayed in the league. You see what I'm saying ? That's when you really demonstrate that you're firmly standing on your position.

Neil Reed: He was willing to tell the SEC, along with Dr. Dickey, back in the late 50's, he was going to leave the SEC.

Dick Gabriel: It was a move Rupp privately considered.

Neil Reed: We had no problem, he always said 'we don't need it.' Football may need it, but he didn't think football needed it either.

C.M. Newton: Coach Rupp would have had to probably had to leave the Southeastern Conference had he integrated in the early days of integration. You got to remember what was happening throughout the South at that time; Mississippi State not being able to play in an NCAA championship and then having to sneak out because they were going to have play against a black player. Other things happening in the deep South; Alabama, for example, '63, Governor Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to keep blacks from entering the university. How are you going to take, at the University of Kentucky, how are you going to take a black player into Tuscaloosa to play ?

Dick Gabriel: Dickey said he considered the move, but with the school having just built a new basketball facility, playing a schedule minus traditional SEC opponents was a financial risk they couldn't afford to take.

Frank Dickey: The attendance would have dwindled, and the ability to pay off the bonds, which was another moral obligation of the University would have been in jeopardy. And so when I brought this to both the athletic board and the board of trustess, they said this has to be considered, and has to come first to be able to meet the obligations of the university to the bond holders.

Dick Gabriel: In the end, Rupp acquiesced to the wishes of his superior. Asked about it at the end of his career, he was defensive.

Adolph Rupp: I've had the people tell me, 'You're a big man. I was surprised at you, I was disappointed in you. Why didn't you drop out of the conference?' We'll now Adolph Rupp doesn't drop out of a conference. I don't determine the policies of the University of Kentucky and I never did. And when they say that I should have refused to play the Southeastern Conference teams, I don't refuse to play Southeastern Conference teams, I play the conference teams that the university says I must play.

Dick Gabriel: Even though the league had voted down the proposition, word spread quickly throughout the South, that the University of Kentucky had sought to desegregate the conference.

Neil Reed: Forget the basketball, forget the player, it was important to him for a social issue. It was only right, and he said it was only right. We're the Commonwealth of Kentucky and every citizen and every student and basketball player at every school, should be able to come and play at the University of Kentucky.

Dick Gabriel: The black-lash found it's way to Lexington.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp and Reid received several death threats, which were forwarded to the FBI.

Neil Reed: I had twelve, absolute, no question about it, death threats that were turned over to the FBI. And Mr. Rupp, I know he had above 120. We'd open up the mail, of course Mr. Rupp got much more than me. But then he'd call me in and say 'This one's for you."

Dick Gabriel: And not all of it came well below the Mason-Dixon line.

C.M. Newton: This isn't going to sit well with some people, probably, but I think you have to recognize too that not only was there racism, pretty strong racism in the South during that time, there was some pretty strong racism in the state of Kentucky. You can ask anybody who grew up in Louisville during that time of integration, or anybody in Eastern Kentucky where there are very few blacks and anybody in Western Kentucky where there practically no blacks, and it was a time, you know, where racism was not an abstract. People think of Kentucky as being a border state and so on, it was far from border. Matter of fact, and I don't know if I've said this publicly, but it doesn't matter, some of the worst hate mail I got, when I integrated the program at Alabama came out of Louisville Kentucky, which was shocking to me.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp was not oblivious to the potential dangers of integration. For years he had witnessed the animosity hurled at his all-white Kentucky teams throughout the South.

Russell Rice: He said, 'What would you do, have me take these black kids down South ?' Now he said, 'You've been going on trips with us, you've seen the colored water fountains, the restrooms, the theaters, and all that and you see how we're treated with my white players. What do you think would happen with black players ?' He had a point there.

Herky Rupp: You go to Auburn and places like that. I mean it was rough being on Kentuckys team being all white. I mean, they hated us. Mississippi State and Auburn and places like that.

Pat Riley: How was he going to take that player down to Oxford Mississippi, or Auburn Alabama ? When they wouldn't let them stay in hotels, you know, when they wouldn't let them eat in restaurants and stuff. Well I heard a lot of stuff about that, he was very concerned about having somebody coming to a team and being threatened, or get hurt or physically abused or verbally abused, and he really spoke out about that a lot.

Dick Gabriel: So the notion of taking his hated Wildcats on the road with black players was not made without serious consideration.

Russell Rice: He had to take his players down there. We would take white players down there and they would abused them, especially in Starkville Mississippi. When Cotton Nash would go out of bounds, people would sit there and pull hair off his leg. All kinds of abuse the white players took. And he said 'what would we do if we took our black players down there if we had any ? That played on his mind. 'Where would you feed them, where would you house them ?', that type of thing.

Thad Jaracz: We weren't a group of people that were beloved by everyone else in the conference. I mean, they hated us, because we had been so successful.

Neil Reed: No ! We'd go down there and they hated us.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp had hired Reed as a full-time assistant, because Reed had taught and coached black youngsters at the high school level. He said that even though the league and the vocal portion of fans resisted integration, they never gave up on the idea, they just had to proceed at a different pace.

Neil Reed: We were kind of by ourselves. And a lot commiserating, we were on the highway a lot. Did a lot of commiserating. But he understood, and he understood, you can't change a culture. It was happening so fast.

Dick Gabriel: Dickey left the University in 1963, but not before restating his support for integrating the SEC. And he found an ally in the school newspaper. The Kentucky Kernel advocated the signing of black athletes. In an editorial, the Kernel said if UK was not allowed to proceed, it should leave the conference. Southern newspapers responded.

Newspaper Column #1

Newspaper Column #2

Frank Dickey: It was a time when we wanted to move faster than we were able to. Let's put it that way. And that's always a distressing sort of situation.

The Early 1960s

Dick Gabriel: In 1963, the country was boiling. African-Americans had found a national voice in Martin Luther King; whose letter from Birmingham jail urged his followers to disobey unjust laws. In May of that year Birmingham police used fire hoses and attack dogs on black demonstrators. Two-and-a-half months after the murder of NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, King delivered his "I Have A Dream Speech" in Washington D.C. Less than three weeks later another tragedy made national headlines: four little girls murdered in a church fire bombing in Selma, Alabama. During the '63 - '64 school year, young men on college campuses discussed and debated the civil rights movement but another topic took precedence: Vietnam.

Larry Conley: That was probably the overriding factor on campus when I was in school at the University of Kentucky, because, we were intimately involved in what was going to happen in that war in Southeast Asia because, we could be going over there.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp concerned himself with his basketball team, still looking for that first black signee. And, he believed the first African-American ever to play for the Wildcats, would have to be special both on and off the floor.

C.M. Newton: I think he envisioned that the first black player coming into his program needed to be an Alex Groza or needed to be a Ralph Beard or needed to be a Cliff Hagan or a Frank Ramsey. And, I think for that reason perhaps they missed out some kids who obviously had a lot of other places they could go - very highly recruited and so on. And yet he wanted that first player to be one to come in and know that he could succeed on the court as well as off the court.

Dick Gabriel: Through his friend former baseball commissioner Happy Chandler, Rupp sought advice from someone who had walked a similar path: Branch Rickey, the man who had signed Jackie Robinson, the first African-American in the modern history of the major leagues.

Neil Reed: I wrote down what he said - the first thing he said - that the youngster you take:

• must be a Kentuckian,
• must be an excellent student,
• must be without question, as with Jackie, nobody is going to keep him on the bench,
• gonna be something, especially something you need -- and boy we needed centers.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp thought he had found his man, Westley Unseld, a powerful 6'7" center who led Louisville Seneca to back-to-back Kentucky state championships.

Neil Reed: There was no finer youngster, and we had great youngsters - I said no finer. (Because we had ????, and I don't think any of them were finer than any other.) But there was no finer person, certainly not a player, which proved, he proved how good he was.

Larry Conley: I told Coach Rupp, I said, "You know what, I think we really ought to try to recruit him." I said could I make a trip down there to talk to him. He said "absolutely." So, I drove to Louisville, went down, sat down with him, and really tried to get him to come to the University of Kentucky. I said Wes, "If you'll come, I said I think we have a chance to win a national championship."

Thad Jaracz: He was a great, great player. I played against him a couple of times when he was at Seneca and I was at Lafayette. He was not only a great player, I mean he was just a great person.

Neil Reed: All the kids wanted him. They're not stupid. When anybody could rebound like him. He led the NBA in rebounding.

Larry Conley: If Wes Unseld had been our center on that '66 team, how good would we have been? We would have been two games better, I can tell you that. But this was a player that was a very unique individual.

Dick Gabriel: Unseld's academic record - like his play under the boards - was rock solid.

Wes Unseld: Athletically, I was probably the top recruit in the country. So, there was pressure from the black community, and black civil rights leaders, for me to do this - to go to Kentucky, to be the first in the SEC. Most people don't know, but I was also first in the ACC being recruited too.

Dick Gabriel: According to one of the myths surrounding Unseld's recruitment, he was introduced at a Kentucky game in Memorial Coliseum and was roundly booed. Truth is, Unseld was booed at the Coliseum, as he and his Seneca teammates played in the state tournament.

Billy Reed: Wes was booed at the game and, it's been said that that was a racial thing, but it wasn't. It was just a typical state tournament crowd, pulling for the little underdog, Breckinridge County. And, the evidence for that is that Breckinridge County had more African-American starters than Seneca did.

Dick Parsons: His team was booed by the fans, but, it wasn't because he was black. It was simply because the mountain teams wanted to defeat the team from Louisville. In those days the Louisville teams were tremendous basketball teams.

Wes Unseld: That was partly because we were from Louisville, we were a big school, we were playing a small school, I think a lot of that had do with that. And, then there were of course the rumors that I might be going to Kentucky.

Dick Gabriel: It was easy to see why Unseld would believe some didn't want him at UK.

Wes Unseld: I started getting threats in the mail, and dead chickens and all that kind of stuff.

Gerald Smith: In the early 1960s that was dangerous. That was dangerous because when you look at the University of Kentucky, there was always a tremendous amount of hostility, awaiting the players from the University of Kentucky when they arrived at some of these SEC schools. One can only anticipate how that hostility would have been elevated with the presence of a black player. Obviously that was a concern. I don't want to overlook the fact that that hostility was also very present on the University of Kentucky campus.

Dick Gabriel: Still, Rupp persisted in his own way. Today head basketball coaches spend nearly as much time on the road recruiting, as they do in the gym. Back then Rupp sent representatives to scout Unseld and to talk to him and his family.

Wes Unseld: I never spoke to Lancaster. I never spoke to Rupp. And, every one especially at my high school and around kept saying that if they really wanted me I would have talked to Rupp and I would have heard from Lancaster. You know, they would have been on my doorstep.

Neil Reed: Getting Mr. Rupp out of Lexington was like, near impossible.

Russell Rice: He didn't go on a lot of recruiting trips now. He believed that the mountains come to Mohammed.

Dick Gabriel: Finally, under pressure from the Louisville newspaper, Rupp set up his own in-home visit. It happened to be on the same day as Wesley had scheduled a speaking engagement.

Wes Unseld: We tried at that time to get him to set up another date. And, he said that he didn't need to talk to me he wanted to meet with my parents. Which at that time was quite common with college coaches. So, we said that would be great. And I waited, to say hello to him and to introduce him to my mother and father. He went into talk and I left.

Dick Gabriel: By all accounts, the visit with Unseld's parents went smoothly.

Adolph Rupp: I went into his home, I was treated fairly nice by he and his mother and by his father.

Dick Gabriel: But, Reed said afterwards that Rupp had a bad feeling about it.

Neil Reed: We got in the car and Mr. Rupp said, "He's not coming." I said why? And he said, "Well, anybody would miss anything to spend some time with me." (laughter)

Dick Gabriel: And even though he knew prior to the trip that the youngster would not be there for the entire in-home visit, Rupp couldn't resist making a comment about it to a Louisville newspaper.

Wes Unseld: A day or two later it was in the paper, that I didn't have the courtesy to meet with him. So I figured he didn't really want me there, and there was no sense in me kidding myself.

Dick Gabriel: One afternoon during the recruitment of Unseld, Rupp found himself in his office facing about a dozen boosters, including a former UK basketball All-American. They belittled Unseld's academic and athletic abilities, and urged Rupp not to sign him or any other blacks.

Neil Reed: They started in, and I could see him getting angry. He looked around that room and pointed that finger of his, and he said 'I want all you son-of-a-bitch'in-bastard racists out of this office and don't ever come back I don't care.' They told him that he could have their season tickets and he said 'give me your season tickets, they'll last about as long as the guy can drive down here from Toledo.' And he said, 'I don't want you in the Coliseum you shouldn't be there.'

Dick Gabriel: It was a permanent separation.

Neil Reed: They never spoke to him again and he never spoke to them. Ever. Ever!

Dick Gabriel: Reed later took UK President John Oswald to visit the Unselds but it was no use.

Wes Unseld, who now lives in Baltimore where he and his wife own and operate a private elementary school, says he knew early that he likely would not be the first African-American to break the racial barrier in either the SEC or the ACC.

Wes Unseld: I realize that I was probably wasn't the type that would have served everybody's purpose in a situation like that. My mentality was probably a little different in that, if you spit in my face, then I would probably spit back in your face. I don't know if I was the type that would have turned around and walked away.

Billy Reed: Unseld's mother wanted assurances from Coach Rupp that if he came to UK, that Coach Rupp would have been able to protect him. Coach Rupp couldn't, would not make that promise. I think that was a very honorable thing for him to do because he couldn't protect him. The year that Unseld was a senior at Seneca, 1964, was the year that three civil rights workers were killed, murdered in Mississippi.

Claude Vaughan: People during the 60s, they didn't want their kids going into Louisiana and Mississippi, and Alabama and Georgia and playing. We were killing people. Burying them in earthen dams, if you remember, blowing up black churches. It was a disgrace.

Larry Conley: When I went to talk to him, the words he said to me still ring in my ears. He said, "Larry, I don't want to be the first black person to go play in the South." You know what, I understood that. I fully understood that, because it was a difficult time back then.

Dick Gabriel: Unseld went onto a Hall of Fame career at the University of Louisville and the NBA. Rupp kept searching.

Recruiting Butch Beard

Dick Gabriel: By 1965 the pressure on Rupp had increased considerably. Dr. John Oswald had been on the job just more then a year as university President. To make certain UK qualified for federal funding he had stepped up efforts to integrate the campus both in academics and athletics. Rupp had made no secret of the fact that he was willing to accept a black player and the rest of the SEC took note.

Billy Reed: People, I think, thought that Kentucky should have been, or Coach Rupp should have been a pioneer because of his influence and his name. And yet it really wasn't in Coach Rupp's nature at his age, I think, to want to be a social pioneer, a guy that was gonna... But the one thing that would have made him and that finally convinced him to recruit African Americans was that they could help him win.

Russell Rice: Polling the conference and asking them if it's all right with them and just getting that response from the northern schools, ????? and they all felt that Kentucky should be the one to break the barrier.

Herky Rupp: Dr. Oswald's opinion was that he wanted all of the departments integrated regardless of ability. In those days the term was referred to as a token black, and this is what Dr. Oswald was wanting. He was wanting my father to put a black youngster on the team regardless of whether he could play basketball or not.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp balked at Oswald's urgings, instead insisting on a black who fit the same sort of academic and athletic criteria as Wes Unseld in order to insure success of the individual and the team.

Claude Vaughan: He said people say I'm a mean old man and maybe I am, but I'm not mean enough to put some kid at the end of the bench just to be a token. He said 'I'm not about to do that.'

Herky Rupp: My father felt that it was important that the youngster play and that he be able to represent the University as a basketball player. That he was spending Commonwealth money on a youngster that should be able to earn it by being able to play and not just sit on the end of the bench and say that we have a black youngster on the team who can't play and doesn't know anything about basketball and that's were they came to their differences.

Pat Riley: He couldn't do that; he wouldn't do that, to have a token black. To have somebody whose feeling would be hurt or you know or their parent's you know would feel the same thing and so he wouldn't do that. If he was going to recruit anybody that player was going to be able to play.

Russell Rice: Not decorate the bench, no. That's what he said, he doesn't want them just to sit on the bench, he wants somebody who could play. Well the white guys, ..... he wanted those that could play also.

Herky Rupp: The worst thing he felt that could happen at this time was if he did recruit a black player or a black youngster who could not play and the youngster was on the end of the bench and he was unhappy and then all the people that were for this happening were unhappy and the kid could not play and he was just sitting there wasting time and then they would say well look he won't play the youngster.

Dick Gabriel: Once again Rupp thought he had found his man, Butch Beard, who led Breckinridge County to the 1964 finals and the '65 Sweet Sixteen championship.

Billy Reed: There was no question about it, as a matter of fact, if any of these critics of Coach Rupp could take the time to do it, they can go back and find in Sports Illustrated a story by Frank Deford that run in June of 1965 were he lauded Kentucky for leading the integration of southern basketball, because everybody was convinced at that time that Butch Beard was coming to UK.

Dave Kindred: There were no black players in the Southeastern Conference. Butch Beard would have been the first. Sports Illustrated wrote about what a great thing it was that Kentucky was recruiting Butch Beard.

Butch Beard: It was the alumni at UK [that] was really pushing for this to happen, OK. I had verbally said that I think I would give it a shot, all right. They had told me that there would be a possibility with one of my teammates would come along, so I would have somebody with me. My high school coach and I, we talked about it.

Dick Gabriel: There was a lot to ponder for a seventeen year old faced with prospect of becoming the first black to play major college basketball in the Deep South where signs of oppression were still painfully apparent.

Don Weber: I do remember traveling in the South to Southeastern Conference meets and I can remember plain as day in Birmingham, Alabama Montgomery, Alabama, excuse me, that somewhere near the track facility where we were going to run there was the official headquarters of a Ku Klux Klan and a big sign. And I remember signs about color people you know and that in restaurants and stuff.

Jim Green: You didn't know what was coming. You know. We had always had to be on guard.

Dick Gabriel: UK track star Jim Green, a world class sprinter, was the first black athlete ever to graduate from an SEC institution.

Jim Green: I remember one time, I think we were going through Mississippi one time, and the coach said you gotta get down in the seat because the Klan is having a march.

Dick Gabriel: A multi-sport star in high school, Green said Rupp asked him to play basketball, but his track schedule was just too demanding. Green had been the same sort of pioneer Rupp was hoping Beard would become.

Butch Beard: When Coach Rupp was talking about that he could not guarantee my safety in the South. I had to think about that and lets be honest, here is where you can call him whatever you want to call him. Maybe he was trying to scare me off, I don't know, but at least I think he was honest in the fact that he told my family and me, 'I don't know if I can guarantee his safety.' And so therefore at least he was up front there with that, Cause he could have lied and made me feel like it would have been OK and something may have happened you know when we traveled in the South.

Billy Reed: You have to remember what was going on in Mississippi and Alabama in 1964, 65, 66. The Ku Klux Klan could do whatever it wanted to, you couldn't protect an African American player. If they wanted to kill 'em they would find a way to do it.

Dave Kindred: It was a dangerous thing. It wasn't just a matter of, I'm going to be uncomfortable playing basketball. This was going to be a dangerous thing.

Butch Beard: As I made it known, that I had interest in the University of Kentucky, it got to be real crazy for a seventeen year old in a small community, OK. There were people who would come up and knock on my door, never seen them before in my life, 'I want you to go to the University of Kentucky you would be good.' There were people who would come up and drop the N word on me and say 'if you go we're going to hang your ass,' and walk off, OK. And know as a seventeen year old you are trying to figure this out.

Dick Gabriel: It wasn't his first brush with racism. As an eighth-grader Beard was going door to door selling Christmas cards to help raise traveling funds for his basketball team. He stopped at the house of a white teammate where Beard's aunt worked as a domestic and he decided to try to make a sale.

Butch Beard: I knocked on their front door, the mother came up and said don't you ever knock on my front door again; you come to my back, OK. Now, I walked off and when my aunt came home, I asked her, why do you work for her. You know, why do you work for her, you know. I knew she needed the money but why. And in a way, you know, I know she thought she was doing the right thing, all right. I had to endure that because I played with her son for the next four years, knowing that this happened.

Dick Gabriel: That was still in his mind when Adolph Rupp came to call.

Neil Reed: He had a marvelous time at Butch's house. He loved it. He had a great time with Butch's mother. He had a great time with Butch and then we went down to the barbershop and I thought we got to get going. We were there a long time. We were there hours. And he was boy he was, put him on the stage look out.

Butch Beard: Coach Rupp came to my house a couple of times. I didn't feel comfortable with him, OK. Now, you know, he has been labeled everything from a racist to whatever. As a seventeen year old country boy, I had to feel at least comfortable in that situation because as my mother asked him about going to Tennessee and Alabama and Mississippi he made some comments that I listened to. It wasn't like he said well were not going to take care of your son Mrs. Beard. I just didn't know if he wanted to fight that particular battle at that time.

Dave Kindred: It was a matter of life, maybe death, for Butch Beard to not go to Kentucky. Adolph Rupp had nothing to do with Kentucky not breaking the race barrier before anybody else. He wanted to do it.

Dick Gabriel: On the first day recruits could sign a national letter of intent, UK hosted Beard and his high school coach, Don Morris, on campus. He was the guest at a dinner at Spindle Top Hall attended by boosters, former UK players and five living governors. He met the Kentucky football and basketball players. The coaches were certain they had their man.

Neil Reed: Saturday I dropped him off at the Phoenix hotel and I said, 'Well I think you know now that Mr. Rupp and the people of the university, the people of the Commonwealth want you here Butch.' Cause he did have a question, I'm sure, he came from west ....but.... and he started crying and I thought it was tears of joy. I thought it was just tears tears of joy. And he said, 'Coach I signed at Louisville yesterday morning.' And I was in shock

Butch Beard: My father and I had gotten with him and he said well what are you going to do. He says you know your are going to have to make a decision. Otherwise this is going to drive you crazy and it is going to drive us crazy. And so, as we were there the night before, I told him, I said look, I'm gonna, I think I am gonna go ahead and go to U of L. I said, I'm gonna go to U of L because it's closer to home. You and mom can get up. You know you can come up and stay, we had an Aunt up there, you can come up and stay with Aunt Queen. You know, I think that's what I'm going to do.

Billy Reed: Butch, I think, was more interested in being a pioneer and was going to be the pioneer until, at the last minute, he got cold feet and changed his mind.

Butch Beard: I knew Wes. I had spent some time in '64 when we were at the state tournament. We were at, like I said, at the same hotel. They were across the hall from me and I had gotten to know him a little bit. And so to me, it was easier going with what I knew then going to the unknown.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp was convinced Louisville had signed Beard prematurely but his protests were ignored.

Neil Reed: Coach Rupp got on the phone to the Commissioner of the Missouri Valley. He just laughed in Coach Rupp's face and since Coach Rupp was not the most popular guy with the NCAA or anybody else he beat all the time, there was nobody helped him. Nobody helped him. He got no help from the SEC office.

Dave Kindred: It was Butch Beard's choice not to go to Kentucky. It wasn't Adolph Rupp's choice to not have Butch Beard. He wanted Butch Beard. Mr. Basketball in Kentucky. He wanted him. He recruited him. Butch Beard didn't want to be the first Kentucky, first black player, going to Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana where bad things happen to black people.

Dick Gabriel: Later that year, in the summer of '65, the University of Kentucky would become the first integrated football team in the history of the Southeastern Conference, signing Louisville prep star Nat Northington. The following year, 1966, was a defining one for basketball at the University of Kentucky, the SEC and African Americans everywhere.

Rupp's Runts

Dick Gabriel: In 1966, Texas Western came seemingly out of nowhere to win the NCAA championship. But one of the more unlikely teams to be involved in the Final Four that year was Kentucky, picked to finish third or fourth in the Southeastern Conference; coming off a 15 and 10 season, with no player taller than six-foot-five. But new assistant coach, Joe B. Hall, convinced Adolph Rupp to allow him to implement a challenging preseason conditioning program, which paid off when it was time to begin practice.

Tommy Kron: As a result of that program, we hit the floor that year stronger than we've ever been and in better shape.

Thad Jaracz: When he came in, he started a running program that basically started as soon as we got back to school, which all of us just hated.

Tommy Kron: Consequently we literally ran over teams.

Dick Gabriel: The Wildcats ripped off an incredible run, winning twenty-three of twenty four regular season games.

C.M. Newton: These guys were warriors, boy, they just would, fight you to the death, you know. And they had great pride in Kentucky, and it was a, it was just a fun time, fun team to watch.

Pat Riley: We just took off. We were a team that started the season, nobody had any hopes for, and we just took off. We won our first 10, 11, 12 games by big margins and then, boom, it became a fantasy year

Dick Gabriel: They beat Dayton and Michigan in the NCAA Mideast Regional in Iowa City, then headed for College Park Maryland, site of the Final Four. The top-ranked Wildcats had a date with second ranked Duke.

Joe B. Hall: The Duke game was the featured game of that tournament. We were ranked number 1, they were ranked number 2. And the word was out, whoever won that game would walk into the championship.

Thad Jaracz: I think a lot of our fans, and other fans around the country thought that was the big matchup. And once we beat Duke, there's a national championship afterthought.

Dick Gabriel: Larry Conley, who had been stricken with the flu in Iowa City, was weak and dehydrated. Pat Riley had been playing with a painful case of athletes foot. They had less than twenty-four hours to prepare for the national championship game.

Larry Conley: Yeah I had the flu, yeah Pat Riley had an infected toe and couldn't run very well. But you know what, when you're playing for a national championship you look past all that. I mean you've got to, just put it aside. You've got to play.

Tommy Kron: Larry had the flu and they were up all night with him, giving him IV's and taking care of him. And we got into the arena the next night and it was like, OK guys, this is it, this is your final game.

Dick Gabriel: In 1966, the semifinals were played on a Friday, and the championship on a Saturday, with no off day or media opportunities in between.

Herky Rupp: None of these things that happened today, and I don't mean to disrespect the circus-type atmosphere, where they have all the press conferences and all the build up like they have today, didn't exist in those days.

Dick Gabriel: In the years since, the Kentucky versus Texas Western, has been framed as the moment in time when college basketball changed forever. A black starting five beating an all-white traditional power. But there were virtually no mentions of it before or after the game.

Dave Kindred: It seemed to be such a sensitive topic, that you brought it up only at your own risk. And the sports page at that time didn't seem to be the place to bring it up.

Billy Reed: I mean obviously you can look out on the floor, and, you know, your eyes don't deceive you. But race was not an issue in that game at the time.

Tommy Kron: I didn't know who they were. None of us knew who they were. And we found out later that they were a very good team.

Pat Riley: It wasn't about that. It was simply about trying to win an NCAA championship. And it wasn't until years later all of sudden people made a big deal about it.

Louie Dampier: There was nothing racial about that game and it was never mentioned. In fact we beat Michigan two game before we played them. They had Cazzie Russell and a couple of others and so.... I even asked Larry Conley, one time when I saw him, I said 'Did I miss something ?' You know because you start reading about it. And he said 'no, there was nothing that was said racially.'

Thad Jaracz: I'm sure there's some people that, uh ... and that's for other people if that's the way they feel, that's the way they feel. From my perspective it was a ... basketball game that was a pretty exciting game, a pretty exciting time, getting to play in the championship game of the NCAA, some place I never thought I'd be.

Tommy Kron: We were trying to win a ball game. And we had played against team previously that had a number of black players on them. You know, not in the SEC of course, but we had played against them throughout the season. So it wasn't a unique experience to do that.

Billy Reed: Kentucky had been a national team really. Coach Rupp would take them to Madison Square Garden in New York or Chicago Stadium, or New Orleans. They were definitely THE program, the class program in college basketball.

Dave Kindred: He was the greatest coach, at the greatest basketball university in the country. And they had all white guys, at a time when other universities, when other basketball programs were being integrated.

Dick Gabriel: African Americans, who were developing more and more of a voice in the '60s, did notice.

Gerald Smith: We just see in black and white, consciously and subconsciously, we see in black and white. And so, it was very apparent. It was very apparent when you looked into the crowd, and you saw predominantly white crowds, and you saw confederate flags, and you looked around press row, and then you see these five black guys in these orange uniforms, sort of , sashaying around real cooling and calmly to play these five white guys. And knowing the history at the University of Kentucky.

Dick Gabriel: In the book about the evolution of Sports Illustrated, called 'The Franchise,' author Michael MacCambridge quoted writer Frank Deford, who in 1966 covered the Kentucky-Texas Western game.

According to MacCambridge, DeFord had been afforded access to the Kentucky locker-room. At halftime he wrote, Deford allegedly heard Rupp use racial epithets to describe the Texas Western players. "He talked that way all the time," Deford reportedly said. The comments never appeared in anything DeFord wrote as they were understood to be off the record, according to the book.

Deford politely declined our request for an interview saying "The Kentucky-Texas Western game has been so misrepresented from what happened at the time that I just decided not to talk about it any more."

The Runts adamantly deny hearing Rupp use language so specifically offensive.

Thad Jaracz: I never heard him say anything like that, OK, I cannot recall, and if I could I would tell you. I cannot recall that. All-right. I recall him calling people a lot of things, but I don't remember that.

Larry Conley: Coach Rupp never let anybody in the locker-room except the team and the officials that were with the university. I mean there were times he wouldn't even let the President of the University in the locker-room.

Dick Gabriel: After their college careers ended, both Kron and Conley developed friendships with Deford, and while they deny hearing Rupp's comments, they defend his credibility.

Tommy Kron: I think Frank is an honorable reporter and if he said he was in the locker-room I'm sure he was.

Larry Conley: If Frank said he was in there, I'm not going to dispute it. Because I think Frank is a gentleman, I've known him for a long time. But I certainly don't remember it.

Dick Gabriel: Texas Western won the game 72-65. Adolph Rupp was denied a fifth national championship.

Larry Conley: There were a lot of people at that time, who thought, you know, he's getting old, let's put him on the shelf, he's out of touch with players. And for him to come back that year, it rejuvenated him. I mean it got that fire in his belly, and he really wanted it, he wanted it badly.

Dick Gabriel: Eventually Rupp was linked by some basketball historians to this game as a sinister presence.

Dave Kindred: Rupp was larger than life, he made himself an easy target. And people have taken the historical truth, that a team starting black players, being from Texas, beat a team starting five white players from Kentucky, and have made that into 'Adolph Rupp was a racist.' That's a logical progression, that is illogical. It makes no sense to me in any way. You know, it was a coincidence of time.

C.M. Newton: He got tagged with that, and it grew and it grew and it grew. And then he probably, with his stubbornness, and so on, he probably did very little to explain it away. So I think he kind of got hung with that tag.

Dick Gabriel: In fact many believe Kentucky and its coach would have been better losing to Duke in the national semifinal game.

Joe B. Hall: I always wondered what would have happened if we had lost and Duke would have played Texas Western. Would they have been pointed out as being segregationalists ?

Russell Rice: The first thing I think it what if Duke would have beat us. They wouldn't have had a ????, so to speak.

Billy Reed: I always said the worst thing that happened to Rupp was beating Duke, because if Duke would have won that game, there's no way that Duke ever would have been the lightening rod that Kentucky was.

Larry Conley: You look at it and you say, 'Yeah, I'm really sorry it has that taint to it,' You know, really I do. I'd have rather that Texas Western would assume the national championship and Kentucky finished second, and that was the end of it. But it was not to be.

Dick Gabriel: For the players involved, their memories of that game are forever linked, for more than earning a shot at winning a national championship.

Tommy Kron: I'm very proud of what we did that year. I'm very proud that we got there. I'm disappointed that we didn't bring the title home. The controversy is a separate issue. It wasn't there at that time. So I mean it wasn't a part of the game for me.

Louie Dampier: We get a lot of notoriety for being runner-up, as the Rupp's Runts. So no it doesn't take anything away, except, just wish we would have won.

Thad Jaracz: How many people get a chance to play on a basketball team that's ranked number one in the country all year long ? How many people get a chance to play in the Final Four ? How many people get a chance to play in the championship game ? How many people really get a chance to win one ? You know, it's not a large group of people.

Tommy Kron: It's proved to be a very important milestone in the growth of, and the proliferation of the black athlete. And the black, in particular the black basketball player in this country. And that's a significant issue to be involved in that game, but back then it wasn't part of it so it didn't, it hasn't tarnished anything for me.

Larry Conley: The controversy will be there forever, I mean I don't think it will ever go away. Because it has been built up, it is now a fixture among basketball people that national championship game, and it is engrained in the mind of everybody who ever was around at that point.

Dick Gabriel: Regardless of how it is perceived then and now, the Texas Western-Kentucky game did mark a turning point in college basketball recruiting.

Gerald Smith: After that 1966 game, that's when the SEC schools, you know all of them really, everybody, went after black players. That's when even universities became more desegregated. That's when change really took place.

Change in the SEC

Dick Gabriel: In 1965, Rupp and his staff became interested in a player from Nashville. His name was Perry Wallace. In 1966, Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt all made recruiting pitches to the All-Star forward.

Perry Wallace: Everybody knew how great UK was; it was a basketball powerhouse. What happened was Coach Rupp was conspicuously absent. In addition, information flowed through the black grapevine about Wes Unseld and Butch Beard, people who had been recruited by UK. Word was Coach Rupp was not active in recruiting them and was not really willing to talk to the parents to at least say that he is willing to stand behind their sons in Mississippi and Alabama in the Deep South.

Dick Gabriel: Of course, Coach Rupp had made personal overtures to both Unseld and Beard, routine for many recruiters, uncharacteristic for the Baron of Basketball.

Herky Rupp: I think he felt that everything being equal if a youngster had the opportunity to come play at the University of Kentucky, you didn't really have to beg them, you just offer them the opportunity, they would consider that an invitation to be part of the greatest program in the US at that time.

Dave Kindred: Recruiting was not the highly scientific seduction that it is today. Either you wanted to play for Adolph Rupp or you didn't. He wasn't going to sweet talk you into it.

Dick Gabriel: Following UK's loss to Texas Western in the 1966 NCAA championship game, it became clear to most that the future of any successful college program included African-American athletes.

Some basketball fans in the south, including Kentucky, were slow to embrace the change.

Gerald Smith: The resistance was there. The resistance was there with the displaying of the Confederate flag. The playing of Dixie and even in terms of lyrics of My Old Kentucky Home.

All of that was the determination of the whites to hold onto the old way. We can't change. We're fighting for our cause that our ancestors fought for years ago and we're not going to surrender. At the same time we have African-Americans saying yes you will surrender. You WILL change. We demand change. You'll change or else. You'll change here at the University of Kentucky or else you will no longer win any other NCAA championship. You'll change or you'll start losing in the SEC. Change is coming. This train is moving whether or not you're willing to get on.

Dick Gabriel: Perry Wallace had decided that he would be the first to break the color barrier in the SEC. It bothered him that Rupp did not make more of a personal pitch.

Perry Wallace: I wondered how I could place my life on the line when there is someone who is not willing to make personal contact with me.

Dick Gabriel: After sitting out his first season as all freshmen did at the time, Wallace started what became a All Conference career. Playing basketball in the Deep South was every bit as daunting as he thought it would be and more.

Perry Wallace: The Mississippi and Alabama schools were always the harshest ones. I mean, out right, people just unleashed it. There was nothing to hold them back. So much so, back home people listening to the game heard the catcalls. They threatened your life, they threatened to lynch you. . In the southern culture, they knew that threatening with lynching or castration, the whole deal. I'm going to kill you.

There wasn't much enthusiasm for people to be the first African-American; for one young man to be the first African-American at Kentucky.

Dan Issel: I love Perry Wallace because he took that challenge at Vanderbilt. Every black player who has played in the SEC should write Perry Wallace a letter; thank you for what you had to go through so that I was able to play in the SEC.

Dick Gabriel: A strong student with supportive parents, Wallace was also a Sunday School teacher, he found it ironic that he embraced the same Christian values as were endorsed by many of the bigots who were hurling the threats and insults.

Perry Wallace: I was the enemy. Although they didn't know me personally and didn't know much about me. The great irony was just what they used to be strong in life and be good in the ways they were good. They were precisely the same things.

Dick Gabriel: Wallace said that there was one place that basketball transcended matters of race: Lexington, KY.

Perry Wallace: The quality of play was so important. Those were just great days. We were in the zone. You had great basketball and you had people like Dan Issel and Mike Pratt. The quality of the game was so good. That just lifted everybody into a wholly different level.

Mike Pratt: Coach Rupp really liked this guy. Caused me some real issues with Coach Rupp because Coach Rupp didn't like the way I guarded Perry even with the success we had. We won the games, but he was always on me about doing something with Perry Wallace - can't you guard him?

Later on, I played with Perry Wallace at an All-Star game and I joked with him about it. You're causing me some problems with Coach Rupp. Coach Rupp is on my butt.

Dick Gabriel: Ironically, Coach Rupp did coach Perry Wallace in an All-Star game once Wallace's college career had ended.

Perry Wallace: He was very, very nice. He offered to be helpful as he could about the draft and speaking to scouts. That was striking.

Dick Gabriel: Perry Wallace was named All-SEC as a senior. He went on to a successful law career and teaches at American University in Washington, DC.

Meanwhile, Rupp resumed his search for the player he thought would be the right man to take the right step as Wallace although the absentee recruiting methods were proving to be more of a hindrance in a time of social change.

Gerald Smith: With all that was on TV and newspapers, to be so disconnected. That was a tragedy - to be so disconnected from that. Knowing that it exists, but perhaps being in a state of denial. One was not willing to look beyond their ego and their determination to win. And say we have a bigger problem here.

Dave Kindred: It was if Rupp could have made it happen. Maybe Rupp could have made it happen. But Rupp was a man born in Kansas in the 19th century. He came to Kentucky in 1930. His world was NOT Martin Luther King's world. He was NOT a social crusader. He was a basketball coach. I think it was too much to expect. Too much to put on his shoulders to think that he should have been a social crusader in addition to being a basketball coach. Very few people could do both of those things.

Dick Gabriel: It would be three more years before UK would sign a black basketball player.

Tom Payne

Dick Gabriel: The years ticked by the late 60's and still there were no black basketball players on the Kentucky roster. Rupp had made overtures to a number of homegrown talents, including Felix Thurston, Jim McDaniels and Hazard's Jim Rose, who by some accounts, including Rupp's, verbally committed to the Wildcats.

Adolph Rupp: The mayor of Hazard went down and got him, brought him into my office. He sat in here, and agreed to come to the University of Kentucky. The mayor was the happiest man that you've ever seen. The next morning, the mayor called me and he was beside himself. The boy had signed to go to Western Kentucky. Now tell me that I didn't make an effort to get these boys, we did. We made every effort that we could.

Dick Parsons: I do recall his comments to the assistant coaches, saying 'why can't we recruit these guys ? Why is it we can't convince them they'd be good basketball players fit in and have a great career. I think he was frustrated simply because in his own mind, he's wondering 'well why would they not come play for me ?' Of course he thought that about anyone, any player in high school would want to play for him.

Dick Gabriel: In fact, late in his career Rupp complained openly about the evolution of the recruitment of athletes, both black and white.

Adolph Rupp: Well look at what they say put them up on a pedestal. Now you have to out, ... have to go and beg a kid to come to school. Is that a hell of an arrangement ? Beg a kid to take a $10,000 scholarship ?

Dick Gabriel: Meanwhile African Americans on the UK campus demanded answers. Rupp, football coach Charlie Bradshaw and athletic director Bernie Shively attended a public forum to discuss recruiting. UK President Dr. John Oswald kept pressing Rupp, demanding that he sign a black player. Again, Rupp balked.

Adolph Rupp: He said you're keeping us from and probably jeopardizing us from getting all this federal help, which amounts to some eleven million dollars. He said, 'well get someone I don't care if he sits on the bench.' I said, 'I'm not going to do that.' I said 'I'm not going to get someone and have him sit on the bench. I said, 'I don't recruit that way. When I recruit I'm going to get someone who that can play. The only way I'm going to offer anybody a scholarship is if they can play.'

Russell Rice: Dr. Oswald insisted that he have a black player, no matter whether he could play or not. And that hurt Rupp quite a bit.

Gerald Smith: One of the immediate changes taking place was how, you know, African Americans wanted to define themselves. What did they want to be called. From colored to negro to black. So by the mid 1960's, you know, it's black power, say it loud I'm black and I'm proud. We don't want to be referred to as coloreds anymore, Negroes. But in interviews and from time to time, Coach Rupp would use the term colored or negro and this was seen as another form of resistance to the changes that were taking place.

Dick Gabriel: Rupp's chief recruiter, Joe B. Hall, kept running into a different kind of resistance.

Joe B. Hall: There was a concerted effort by several of the assistant coaches that I worked against, to keep black players from coming to Kentucky. I mean, even black assistants for other colleges worked against us from getting black players. And I told one of them, I said 'I can't imagine you not wanting to help us integrate our program. You being a black assistant.'

Dick Gabriel: But in 1969 the University of Kentucky finally signed its first African American basketball player, Tom Payne, a 7-foot prep star from Louisville.

Joe B. Hall: He was a tremendous prospect, just absolute seven-foot, three-hundred pounds. I swear he must have had a 30-inch waist.

Claude Vaughan: He could shoot it outside, he could take you out like Issel did, shoot the 15-, 18-foot shot. He could take you inside, you know, and he was just a sophomore.

Russell Rice: Tom, he thought that Adolph could do him more to advance his pro career. That was his motivation.

Dick Gabriel: Payne was an army brat. He spent part of his childhood in Europe, so he knew little of the controversy swirling in the deep South.

Tom Payne: My mother and my father were not racist, and they never gave me any kind of racial perspective. And living on an Army bases, I lived on Army bases my life, most of my life, where whites and black intermingled, and so I never really got racism, you know, in my background. I never heard 'nigger' and all that other stuff. Now that may be idyllic but it's true.

Dick Gabriel: Payne couldn't practice with the Wildcats as a freshman because of academic troubles. But by the time he was a sophomore, he was fully eligible and ready to begin play for Adolph Rupp.

Tom Payne: What I remember about Coach Rupp is that I knew, I think I knew in my heart that he would play the best player every time. And that's what I really worked for.

Dick Gabriel: No amount of work, both on or off the court could have prepared Payne for the abuse that he was about to endure from opposing fans.

Mike Casey: I couldn't believe, I really couldn't. You know, spit at him, throw things at him.

Tom Payne: I'll never forget Knoxville, I was really crushed up there. I heard the 'coons' and the other things that I was called. I heard the heckles and stuff like that.

Mike Casey: Knoxville really surprised me because, you know, we'd come out of the dressing room, and we had to come right by the Tennessee crowd and they were just unmerciful on him ... you know, using the N word and cussing him and everything. I question whether I'd, if I'd been black, would want to go down south.

Herky Rupp: They were throwing ice, and they were spitting out of the stands, and they were quite vocal. I can't remember anything in particular, because they liked to focus on my father as well as Tom but it was pretty bad, I mean it was rough. My wife and I were right there at the entrance when the team was coming off and we were starting to step out and there was such a barrage of things being thrown, that we had to step back in. The kids were coming out, as I said, with Coke dripping off of them and things like that, it was pretty bad.

Russell Rice: I remember one place where he just shook his fist at the crowd, there. Razzed him so bad at a place down South.

Claude Vaughan: We went down to play Louisiana State and it was terrible the way they hollered and screamed and yelled at Tom Payne. And Coach Rupp was infuriated.

Mike Casey: We bonded that game, because they were unmerciful on him. You know, they spit on us coming out of the tunnel.

Tom Payne: That's what I couldn't understand about life, that sometimes when you're put in a position, you have to have the wherewithal to go through the process. You see, and if you understand that, you're better able to... Jackie Robinson understood it. I, Tom Payne, didn't understand it. I just felt that I was being rejected on some level, and it hurt and I wasn't strong enough to deal with it.

Dick Gabriel: Today Payne says he harbors no ill will at anyone who hurled insults and he has a profound admiration for his coach.

Tom Payne: I love Adolph Rupp because of one thing, Adolph Rupp put me out on that court when the time came. And if you go back and look at the newspapers, a lot of people, I don't think necessarily, wanted me to go out on that court at the time.

Claude Vaughan: There was an enormous amount of pressure put on him by some of the local bigots not to play Tom Payne.

Dick Gabriel: Vaughn said prior to Payne's first varsity game, with the Wildcats playing at Northwestern, some of Rupp's friends and confidant's tried to talk the coach out of starting the seven-foot sophomore in favor of an all-white starting five.

Claude Vaughan: Joe Hall and I stayed up we and talked about it. Finally Joe went to bed, I don't guess I went to bed until 4 o'clock in the morning. But I knew Coach Rupp was going to do what was right and he did what was right. Play Tom Payne, he started Tom Payne.

Tom Payne: Adolph Rupp showed some kind of courage, and I just love Adolph Rupp right now, where I'm at now. And I'm not saying that in any kind of way, because when I see pictures of me sitting beside him on the bench, it makes me feel good.

Dick Gabriel: The Wildcats prospered during their first, and what turned out to be their only season with Tom Payne, winning twenty-two games and the SEC championship. After that one year, Payne who already was a husband and a father, declared hardship and signed with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.

Russell Rice: When Tom Payne went pro after his sophomore year, that hurt Adolph. Cause he said, 'There goes my chance to win another national championship.' So he was thinking not what color that player is, but can he play ?

Tom Payne: At that time, I didn't really understand what I was doing. I didn't understand who I was in Kentucky history. And had I understood, who I was, like I do now, then I would have stayed and I would have continued to play and battled it out.

Dick Gabriel: He would spend just one season in the NBA. This is Tom Payne's world today, the Green River Correctional Complex in Central City Kentucky. After his rookie season, he was arrested and jailed on a rape charge. He was paroled in the early 80's and moved to California where Payne was arrested and convicted of rape again. After serving 14 years, he was returned to Kentucky, and sentenced to another 15 years for violating his parole.

When he talks about his college career, Payne still calls the Wildcats, 'we.' In fact, he says, being a part of Kentucky's storied basketball tradition helped get him through some tough times during his incarceration.

Tom Payne: I've been at the verge of almost wanting to take my own life. I've been so emotionally distraught and despondent, to the point where I used to go to my cell and cry every night.. . . Because of the whole thing. My momma's hurt. My children growing up without a daddy. Not representing my state like I'm supposed to. The opportunities that I let go, it's very painful. And one of the ways I've made it is because, I've bonded with that (DG: with the Wildcats ?). Yeah. (DG: You still find pride in that ?) Yeah.

Dick Gabriel: He's had a lot of time to think about UK basketball, his place in history and his coach.

Tom Payne: I'm going to hold Coach Rupp, I'm going to hold Kentucky, in esteem. Because I had an opportunity there. I did something historic there. It's a legacy for my grandson.

Epilogue

Dick Gabriel: Adolph Rupp relinquished his job after the 1971-72 season, forced to step down at age 70 by the school's mandatory retirement policy. He died five years later. But his persona gradually would take on new life as the relevance of the Texas Western game grew with each passing decade.

Herky Rupp: We were not aware of any of the revisionist history until 1991, the 25th anniversary of this particular game. And it caught us totally by surprise because they were manufacturing a story that didn't exist.

Dick Gabriel: 1991 is when Sports Illustrated published a story marking the 25th anniversary of the 1966 NCAA championship game matching Rupp's Runts with Texas Western. The article, written by Curry Kirkpatrick, more than implied that Rupp had played the race card with his team in the hours leading up to tip-off. According to Kirkpatrick, 'Rupp was usually a charming p.r. rogue, brimming with diplomacy and psychology, regrettably, his politics leaned more toward the KKK." - Curry Kirkpatrick Sports Illustrated April 1, 1991

To a man Rupp's players deny it ever happened. Texas Western coach Don Haskins has admitted to telling his players he knew Rupp had made condescending racial comments to his team prior to the game. Haskins since has distanced himself from those remarks, but, burnished by time, it has become fact in the minds of many.

Dave Kindred: Everything I've ever read about Adolph Rupp seems to have been written by people who had no idea who Adolph Rupp was. Who could have never been around him. Never had spent an hour talking to him, but are dealing with the parody. Dealing with the caricature, dealing with the cardboard cutout of who they THINK Adolph Rupp was. Rupp has been transformed into a symbol of racism that he never was.

Billy Reed: All of a sudden this is such an easy story. It really is a story in black and white in the minds of people who weren't there. And that becomes such an easy story to portray, to dramatize . The facts tend to muddy that because there was a lot of gray.

Pat Riley: I was there four years. I never, ever ever, EVER got any hint at all from him that he was that. One thing coaches can't do is they can't lie to their players. The players know coaches.

Russell Rice: They didn't know him. A lot of people who talk about him, write about him they weren't born when he was alive.

Mike Pratt: I don't think the people who are revisiting the world back then, had any knowledge about what college sports were about or what the world was about at the time. So I think he was an easy target, he's not here to defend himself, and many of his peers are gone.

Dick Gabriel: As basketball grew in popularity, Rupp's reputation as a villain grew with it. In his book, 'Rupp as I Knew Him' former assistant Harry Lancaster claimed Rupp used a racial slur in complaining that University President John Oswald wanted the basketball program integrated. It was a remembrance that didn't add up, given the fact that Rupp had backed previous President Frank Dickey's move to integrate the entire Southeastern Conference in the late 50's.

Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated, wrote "Adolph Rupp...was the game's George Wallace when it came to integrating black players. For most of his career, Rupp fought tooth and nail against the inclusion of blacks into the game." - Seth Davis (Sports Illustrated)

Said Rick Cantu of the New York Times, "Adolph Rupp once declared he would never let a black player wear Kentucky blue..." - Rick Cantu, New York Times.

There were more as writers began to quote each other. It was torture for Rupp's family members who at one point considered legal action, only to find that you cannot defame the dead.

Herky Rupp: Stories written by sportswriters who were not alive in those days. Written by people who didn't know my father, who didn't live in the South. Who didn't understand any of the situation. They just pick up an idea and run with it.

Tommy Kron: That's just not right, and it's unfair. The man doesn't have a chance to make a retort, and the family doesn't really have a chance to make a retort. And that's really not fair to a fellow that certainly doesn't deserve that, and a family that doesn't deserve that, and a university that doesn't deserve that.

Herky Rupp: I don't understand how they can pick this thing up and run with it, when there is absolutely no, not one iota of truth in it from the standpoint of actions or words by my father to give any legitimacy to this.

Jim Tucker: I know his son has carried that stigma along with him.

Dick Gabriel: Jim Tucker, the Paris Kentucky native, who landed a college scholarship on Rupp's recommendation in 1950.

Jim Tucker: I had an opportunity to call him, to tell him the same story that I just told you. About what his father did for me and he said that has done him a world of good, because no one had ever said anything of a positive nature about his father. And he was so happy that I would come forward and say something about Mr. Rupp.

Dick Gabriel: In the book, 'Let Me Tell You a Story,' written by John Feinstein legendary Celtics coach Red Auerbach tells of their friendship and dismisses the notion that Rupp was a segregationalist. He said "All I ever hear from people is that he was a racist. You know what ? He did hate black guys - who couldn't play ! He also hated white guys who couldn't play, blue guys who couldn't play, and green guys who couldn't play, and Muslims who couldn't play. That was it. All these people who never met the guy said he was a racist. I knew the guy." - Red Auerbach

Red Auerbach: When I used to draft, and did most of the scouting, in fact all of the scouting, I never went to a draft meeting without calling him up. And we'd go for an hour or so on the telephone, 'who do you like and why?' I always used to try to draft as many boys as I could from Kentucky.

Dave Kindred: Auerbach said that he didn't care, Adolph didn't care if they were red, if they were green, if they were yellow, if they were black or if they were white. He just wanted basketball players that could win. You know, and I truly believe that.

Dick Gabriel: Had Rupp moved more quickly to desegregate his team, as former UK President John Oswald urged, perhaps he could have avoided much of the criticism leveled at him before, and especially after he died.

Larry Conley: As I look back on it, we probably could have made a stronger effort to recruit black players back then. Certainly we were in the forefront, and should have been, I mean we were the best college basketball team in the country, we were the best college program in the country. And if there was anybody was going to take a leadership position, it would have been the University of Kentucky and Coach Rupp. But you know, when you look back on it, I mean, he was successful and he was winning games, he was winning 20 or more every year. He just didn't want to change a whole lot.

Gerald Smith: There ought have been some things that were in place to sort of raise the eyebrow of a parent or an athlete. You know, I see some changes but there was no evidence that there was change taking place here, not only on the basketball court but elsewhere, we couldn't see change, and so if you don't see it anywhere else, well why can I expect it in Memorial Coliseum ?

Dick Gabriel: Some of those who actually lived and worked through the troubled decade of the 60's have a different perspective of the time and the man.

C.M. Newton: Actually experiencing the culture and the society the way it was. Not the way that it ought to be or the way somebody thinks it might have been, but the way it was. And certainly he was a product of his times.

Billy Reed: If Coach Rupp was a racist, and I don't know whether he was or not. I don't know what was in Coach Rupp's heart. All I know are the facts, my personal experiences, things I've read, things I've witnessed, things I know. And that, to me, is the only fair way to deal with the situation.

Dave Kindred: The greatest failure in all of this stuff is to try to apply today's standards to another era. If you're talking about the difference of 40 years, if you're talking about a whole generation. I don't think you can say that the way the world is today is the way it should have been 40 years ago. Maybe we all should have been Martin Luther King but there was only one of him.

Pat Riley: He was so big that it was left to him to be the person to segregate the South in collegiate sports, or be the person to go out and recruit the first black player, and he tried to do those things.

Jim Tucker: I believe his hands were tied. He wanted to win, and I believe if he could have put a monkey in a suit to win a ballgame, he would have done that. But he wanted to win, and still there are people who believe that he was a bigot. I don't think so.

Dick Gabriel: Neil Reed, the ex-Kentucky assistant who spearheaded the recruitment of black players in the early 60's, visited Rupp in the final stages of the coach's life.

Neil Reed: He said 'we were selfish.' He and I were selfish. We wanted it for the social advancement and we were selfish in that we were willing to put Westley, just as the three kids in Philadelphia that were bulldozed over, we were willing to put Westley's life on the line, for us to be successful in integration.

Dave Kindred: He didn't care, he just wanted to win games, he would win games however he could win games. That's why I'm still waiting for someone to show me that he turned his back on a black player who would have helped him win games.

Pat Riley: People who didn't know him, went through the myth, and the legend and all the rumors more than anything else, and did not go directly to the people who knew Adolph, because if you talk to those people that were close to him, he was very concerned about race. He was very concerned about, you know, segregation, he was very concerned about when is it going to happen in the South

Frank Dickey: A man with a really ... big heart. A person who was very charitable, a person that .... who helped everybody.

Tom Payne: Let's not define Coach Rupp by a 1966 game, let's define him about what he did with his life. He was progressive and he even had affection for me. You see what I'm saying ? Let's define him and let's look at where that went to, let's look at what's become of that, let's look at where we're at now.

Today

Dick Gabriel: In a building named for Adolph Rupp, the University of Kentucky plays just as it did when he was coaching, at the highest level. Today's roster is made up primarily of African Americans.

Gerald Smith: Just seeing how more diverse the squad is now. Everybody seems to be behind the team. I still believe, however, that that shadow of Adolph Rupp is still casting across the University of Kentucky, whether people like it or not, in a sort of negative light.

Billy Reed: UK, not only UK, Dick but I believe the entire state of Kentucky has suffered unfairly for the way this whole Rupp situation has been misrepresented. It has given us a stigma that we don't deserve to have. And there are still some African American, older African Americans who will never be Kentucky fans, because of what they believe to be true about Rupp.

Gerald Smith: A lot of the young people are not aware of it. They just want to be on national television, but that generation that was here is still alive and doing well, and has not forgotten. African Americans have a long memory, and they share those things with their children. And people still ask me, 'How's it going OVER THERE as if the University of Kentucky is like a distant island, even when it's right here in the midst Lexington. And so that disconnect is still very present 40 some years later.

Dick Gabriel: Helping to close the gap is the head coach, hired in 1997. The athletic director at the time, C.M. Newton, believed he was the best man for the job.

C.M. Newton: You know the fact that race wasn't a consideration in the hiring of Tubby speaks volumes, but then the fact that he's been so accepted, and much of that is Tubby. He's a very unique and special man, as is Donna. But it also speaks well for, when you look at people as people, and not based on the color of their skin.

Tubby Smith: When he investigated and looked around and saw my background and how I conducted myself and how he handled myself. He thought I could handle the situation, whether I was black or white, I think it didn't make much difference to him. It was whether I could do the job or not.

Jim Tucker: I think that that's one of the greatest things that's ever happened to Kentucky. And Tubby Smith, without question, is likened to Martin Luther King when it comes to the basketball world.

Butch Beard: I wrote him a letter, OK. And I told him, it was the greatest thing that ever happened in the state of Kentucky. Now it's not going to be the easiest thing for you, but it's the greatest thing that ever happened.

Herky Rupp: Tubby's doing it the right way. I think his kids represent the school and the state the way that that my father would want them to represent the state and the school. And there's no question about it, he'd be very proud of Tubby.

Claude Vaughan: I think they're kind of cut out of the same cloth, in my opinion. Tubby makes them go to school, makes them behave. If they don't, they go someplace else and play.

Dave Kindred: He's following in the kind of footsteps of success that Adolph first laid down. I think that's what Adolph wanted. Adolph wanted to create a kingdom, and he did.

Butch Beard: Now that he's gotten the long-term contract, and I think that the state now understands, he's going to be there for a while. OK This is our guy, let's embrace him. Let's see if he can continue this tradition for the next four or five years. And that's very good to see because of the mere fact, that in a sense he's a pioneer and he doesn't even know it.

Pat Riley: Right now at the University of Kentucky, the program is as great as it's ever been. And the greatest irony in the whole story is that Tubby Smith is black. And already has won an NCAA championship. And so, you know, history has always proven that if you will pay attention to what happened to you in the past and what you are about and where you came from, then you can be even greater in the future.

C.M. Newton: All Kentuckians care so much about the University and about their program, and that's whether you're black or white. That I think it took, a lot of people where they had to kind of look inside themselves and say 'Does this really make a difference ?' And I think the answer, by the real Kentucky fan was, "Whoever our coach is, we're going to support him, whether he's green, purple, polka-dot or whatever"

Tubby Smith: It's an honor and it's a privilege knowing that I am black man, representing not just a race, but representing the Wildcat Nation, representing the University of Kentucky and what we stand for here. And I just, and promoting all the virtues that this university and this community and this state has to offer around the nation and around the world.

Herky Rupp: Unfortunately for Tubby, or any other coach, it all boils down to one word, and that's win.

Dick Gabriel: On January 19, 2005 Kentucky played Ole Miss in Oxford Mississippi. Nine out of ten starters were black. There were two black head coaches. And it was just another basketball game on a crisp winter night.

Butch Beard: It's a given now. You know it's a given. And thank God, thank, yeah I look at it, thank God.

Dave Kindred: CM Newton at Alabama played five black players. Alabama, first I think in the SEC. He was one of Adolph's players. He was one of Adolph's acolytes. So when you see it today, it's normal everywhere. And it's a good thing to see that the poison that existed in the 60s has been drained out of it.

Larry Conley: Gradually it was going to come, and of course once it came it was a tidal wave. Now we have so many quality black athletes playing in the South, really good, and coaches.

Butch Beard: You look at Alabama, you look at Mississippi's teams. You know you look at Georgia's teams, and they're predominantly black. And those kids don't have a clue how this all turned around. If Perry Wallace hadn't done what he did, they wouldn't even have been there, you know.

Dick Gabriel: It was a tidal wave triggered the day Wallace.signed. He says that occasionally he finds himself talking to Southerners who admit they were less than accepting, when he became the SEC's first black player.

Perry Wallace: What happens is that, I appreciate what's going on when we meet. The circles, our circles are rounding out. Are rounding out. And so I understand that. And whenever it happens, I appreciate how important it is.

Dick Gabriel: Circles are eternal, and it's likely the debate about Adolph Rupp will be as well. He was a man some believe should have done more, who used racially insensitive language at a time it was becoming socially unacceptable, but also according to those who knew him best, a man who did try to effect change the best way he knew how.

Adolph Rupp: I paid strict attention to my own business. And if you do that, you'll get along. I didn't try to step on anyone else's toes, and I didn't try to run over anybody. And, I didn't try to demand any attention or anything like that. I just went along and got my knitting needle and went to knitting.

Dick Gabriel: He starting pushing the Southeastern Conference to desegregate in the late 50's and early 60's and when word of his intentions swept through the south, he had his life threatened. Still so many have chosen to define him by one basketball game. At least future generations now have more facts to consider, about the Baron of Basketball, Adolph Rupp.

I would like to thank Richard Yates, Diane Massie and Bryan Arendall for assistance with the transcription of this piece. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, please .